Welcome Spring. It’s been a long, cold winter.
This week we have Japanese nuclear reactors and a new war. It’s always something!
153 Thoughts to “Open Thread ……………………………………………Monday, March 21”
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Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
I just finished watching this, and am posting the link for the Big Love fans.
http://www.hbo.com/big-love/episodes/5/53-where-men-and-mountains-meet/video/ep-53-inside-the-episode.html?autoplay=true&cmpid=e3
Cast and crew commentary on the finale. Enjoy!
Thanks for sharing, Emma.
And Juturna has watched. We are free to discuss.
Well, I sniveled again. What a great ending. He paid Barb the highest honor he could. I wonder what happened to Nikki’s daughter?
Thanks Emma, I enjoyed that. I really like how they tied a very Christian event (Easter) with the rebirth (Easter) of Bill and Barb’s failth through family. And that scene of people who went before them – was great. Well written and well acted. I’d like to see more from those writers – make my HBO susbcription worth it…..
There is a Big Love thread now. I will respond to Juturna there.
More teacher attacks this morning…make that attacks on teachers….Faux News is now reporting that WI teachers get 90 sick days. bwaaaaahahahahahaha they wish!!!
No teacher gets 90 sick days. I expect someone has accumulated 90 days. That is like not taking a sick day for 8-9 years. I don’t know why Faux would report something like that. There is a huge difference between earning sick leave…(10-15 days a year in many areas) to being allowed to accumulate days over the years.
As a routine watcher – they do like the sensational. Like bad campaign ads. I do enjoy seeing them face Bill O’Reilly who slaps them down, Geraldo who gets under their skin, Dana Perino who raises her eyebrows and keeps going. I see F&F as a forum for Malkin and that Peter guy who comes from another planet. Recently Alyson Camerata has filled in for Carlson – she is a bit more stable. F&F is going to have to make some changes, all three now sound alike so what’s the point?!
Ninety days is half a school year. Someone would notice. Check the costs for substitutes….that’s one way to assess the cost impact of teacher absences.
It was first reported here: http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/118325714.html?blog=y
and here: http://www.thenorthwestern.com/article/20110319/OSH0105/110318132/Union-concessions-would-save-Oshkosh-district-least-4-million-renegotiated-contracts?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
From The Northwestern (emphasis mine):
Unions representing teachers and other Oshkosh school district workers agreed to freeze wages, pay more for their benefits and allow administration to change health insurance providers in exchange for a one-year extension of their collective bargaining agreements…
The tentative agreements, which were announced at 6 p.m. Friday, would balance the Oshkosh districts 2011-12 budget and absorb an estimated $4 million cut in revenue that is expected if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed biennial budget is approved.
According to the agreements:
-Wages would be frozen for all employees, meaning they would not receive any extra pay for years of experience or level of education. Also, hourly pay for summer school teachers would be reduced.
-The district would no longer pay the employees’ 5.8 percent share of pension contributions. This would save about $2.9 million.
-Employees would pay for 12 percent of their health insurance premiums instead of 5 percent. This would save about $1 million.
-District administration would be allowed to seek bids for cheaper health insurance providers or redesign insurance plans.
-Teachers would no longer receive 90 sick days per year. Instead, they would receive 10 sick days per year that could accumulate up to 90 days. Unused days would not be paid back.
The part “from The Northwestern” comes from here:
http://www.libertyjuice.com/2011/03/22/oshkosh-teachers-got-90-sick-days-a-year/
90 sick days. Yep.
http://www.oshkosh.k12.wi.us/staff/sick_oea.cfm
Article 20 of the collective bargaining agreement summarizes the employee rights to use income protection “sick leave.”
1. All teachers shall be guaranteed ninety (90) teaching days of income protection for each teaching contract year in the event of absences due to sickness or disability. Such income protection shall be prorated for teachers teaching less than full time.
2. Absences of illness in the immediate family shall be covered by this provision, provided such absences are caused by critical illness, a sudden call for suspected critical condition, the necessity of taking a member of the family to the hospital, or the making of arrangements for care due to sudden illness, but shall not apply to cases where the employee’s presence is required as a nurse, or as a caretaker, or to provide for the operation of the family due to sickness or an accident in the family.
3. The Board reserves the right to send an employee to a physician at district expense for an examination when deemed necessary. Such teacher will submit to such examination unless refusal is based on bona fide religious convictions.
4. Teachers shall not continue to draw daily income protection benefits after they become eligible for benefits under the district’s Long Term Disability Plan; however, any unused days shall remain in the teacher’s personal account.
(“Personal account” defined as being those unused income protection days remaining of the original ninety (90) days.)
That ‘sick leave’ is like catastrophic illness coverage…more like short term disability it sounds like. It isn’t routine ‘I have a cold’ or ‘my kid has the chicken pox’ illeness. That kind of illness would be covered by the expected :
All full-time Employees shall accumulate sick leave, with pay, at the rate of one (1) working day for each month of service. All part-time employees shall accumulate sick leave on a prorated basis. For the purposes of this section, leave of absence without pay shall not be considered service.
PWC has a sick leave bank which would be more along the lines of what Cargo has written. Employees deposit days into the bank and can pull out days up to 45 to be renewed once, I believe. When the bank gets low, all members are reassessed a day.
Employees may also donate days with the permission of the school board, to an individual employee in sick leave trouble when the bank space has run out.
While I was snooping I also looked at their salary schedule and substitute pay. The starting salary was about 10k less than here. The top salary just for certificated jobs was $30-40k less a year.
Sub pay was $100 a day with long range being $125 a day for a certificated sub. Again, no one is getting rich.
Once again, I feel people who are barely eeking out a living are being targetted by politicians and anyone else who take find some way to misrepresent their cause.
At any rate, they aren’t getting 90 sick days a year to use willy nilly. It is an income guarantee to be used in the event of catastrophic illness. I expect it is some sort of covered plan that also doesn’t really cost the jurisdiction any money to speak of. Other than administrative cost, the sick leave bank is not all that expensive other than paying for subs.
Let me see if I have this right—you’re in a F-15E, flying at 4,000 feet at perhaps 500 MPH and you see some civilians on the ground being attacked by Libyan forces. Are they ordinary, run of the mill civilians you are supposed to help or are they opposition forces? And this is how it begins…
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT ARE MURKY IN LIBYAN AIR WAR
Posted: 21 Mar 2011 07:01 AM PDT (From “The Cable”)
The head of U.S. Africa Command, charged with running the operation in Libya, said that the international coalition in Libya will not help the rebels’ military units, only civilians targeted by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces — assuming they can tell the difference between the two. “We do not provide close air support for the opposition forces. We protect civilians,” Gen. Carter Ham, the top military official in charge of the operation, told reporters in a conference call on Monday. The problem is, there is no official communication with the rebel forces on the ground and there is no good way to distinguish the rebel fighters engaged against the government forces from civilians fighting to protect themselves, he said. “Many in the opposition truly are civilians…trying to protect their civilian business, lives, and families,” said Ham. “There are also those in the opposition that have armored vehicles and heavy weapons. Those parts of the opposition are no longer covered under that ‘protect civilians’ clause” of the U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized military intervention. “It’s a very problematic situation,” Ham admitted. “Sometimes these are situations that brief better at the headquarters than in the cockpit of an aircraft.” So how are pilots in the air supposed to tell the difference? If the opposition groups seem to be organized and fighting, the airplanes imposing the no-fly zone are instructed not to help them. “Where they see a clear situation where civilians are threatened, they have… intervened,” said Ham. “When it’s unclear that it’s civilians that are being attacked, the air crews are instructed to be very cautious.” “We have no authority and no mission to support the opposition forces in what they might do,” he added. What’s more, the coalition forces won’t attack Qaddafi’s forces if they are battling rebel groups, only if they are attacking “civilians,” Ham explained. If the Qaddafi forces seem to be preparing to attack civilians, they can be attacked; but if they seem to be backing away, they won’t be targeted. “What we look for, to the degree that we can, is to discern intent,” said Ham. “There’s no simple answer.” One thing that the coalition is clear about is that there is no mission to find or kill Qaddafi himself. “I have no mission to attack that person, and we are not doing so. We are not seeking his whereabouts or anything like that,” Ham said. He acknowledged that the limited scope of the mission in Libya could result in a stalemate, which would achieve the objective of protecting civilians but allow Qaddafi to remain in power. “I have a very discreet military mission, so I could see accomplishing the military mission and the current leader would remain the current leader,” Ham said. “I don’t think anyone would say that is ideal.” He said the United States was looking to transfer leadership of the mission to an international organization or structure within a few days. U.S. planes flew about half of the 60 sorties above Libyan airspace on Sunday and are expected to fly less than half of the sorties Monday. The attack on one of Qaddafi’s compounds over the weekend targeted a command and control building inside the compound, and did not represent a widening of the mission to attack Qaddafi’s core military infrastructure, Ham said.
I put this comment in the wrong spot, but at least it won’t get lost in all the dust up about the Libya No-fly Zone 😉
“You can’t simultaneously fire teachers and Tomahawk missiles.” – Stewart
George, I agree. We have no plan or clue about Libya. It’s Amateur Hour @ the White House.
@marin, perhaps there is a plan but they haven’t publically announced it. That might be a good idea.
I do agree, that was a funny Stewart line.
@Moon-howler
I sincerely hope you are right and I am wrong.
Signed,
Team Obama: World Police
@marin, I hope it is just a drive by. I don’t want to pay for another war. Frankly, I really don’t much care about Libyans living under Gaddafi. They have done so for years.
Cargo, I guess we could settle it by calling the Oshkosh District HR department and just asking. No one gets 90 days of sick leave. That doesn’t even make sense. That’s why I felt so secure saying no to it.
That 90 days is a short term disability program. That is fairly common and as typical being pulled from context. The insurance companies monitor that.
Full pay for disability is pretty nice. My company offers me 66% of salary on STD and 60% LTD (if I pay into the LTD insurance pool).
I don’t know how others have it but that’s a pretty swanky benefit – atleast compared to mine.
[STD = Short Term Disability, LTD = Long Term Disability]
@marin Thanks for your codes!! 😈
http://www.oshkosh.k12.wi.us/site_uploads/uploads/Policies/223_1_R_Admin_Compensation_Benefits_08_04_10.pdf
Have at it. From what I can see, you may ACCRUE up to 90 days of sick leave. That prevent large payouts at retirement. They get 12 days a year.
Also, the salaries didn’t look so hot.
accrue – one little word makes such a difference. Guess someone just forgot that one little word. But it sounded SO much more evil without it. Isn’t editing handy??!!! 🙂
@Juturna
Salaries in relation to us here in Virginia? Sure. But, cost of living is much lower in WI than it is in VA.
Have at it? No thanks. Not interested. However, I am interested in how those benefits exceed the private market and if that’s the case we need to trim them down some to contain costs.
How do we know that the cost of living is less in WI than in VA? That seems like an assumption to me.
We have talked here about how public employees often took less in salary that private industry in exchange for better benefits.
The day a teacher makes more than other professionals in private industry I will eat my hat. What’s interesting about this challenge is that public education is the norm. Therefore, the pay comparisons tend to be between jurisdictions. There are some jobs that are unique to government: cops, teachers, judges, magistrates, etc.
To hold a private market comparison simply isn’t a good measure.
Have at it meant read it so you’d have the facts about the 90 days of sick leave afforded to teachers in that school district.
Regarding the salaries, believe me I spend enough time benchmarking classifications and salaries regionally and nationally. I understand the factors.
According to the statistics I have access to – The cost of living in Milwaukee compared to cost of living in the District of Columbia is 32% less. The cost of living in Milwaukee compared to Richmond is 2.7% higher. I’d say housing in Manassas may not as lowas Richmond, but pretty darn close. So if I live in Richmond VA and make $55k, I’d have to make $57,934 to match the standard of living.
Oooops, I didn’t see your response, Juturna. I don’t think I have contradicted though.
@Juturna
I’ll trust your numbers. Is the cost of living in WI lower or higher than that of VA? MH is calling it an assumption but I think it’s a safe one to make overall.
Y’all see that SD is signing a mandatory waiting period on abortions? Sounds like they’re using anti-gun laws to combat abortion……..
@marin, I assume NOVa has a higher cost of living than WI…and that is an assumption but a fairly safe one. All of VA? That is the part I feel is an assumption. When you get down intoSouthwest or Southside, I am just not so sure.
Leave a link, por favor for the anti gun laws vs abortion.
Dana Perino raises her eyebrows????????? You’ve gotta be kidding! I haven’t seen a single muscle move on her face. Sometimes I wonder whether she’s real or has a mask on. And those eye lashes. – OK, OK, it’s petty but I just wanted to vent.
Notice that the war always boils down to teachers. No one ever really goes after the cops or the nurses and medical staff at municipal run hospitals.
Of course, there are lots more teachers than cops. I think it is the large number of teachers serving as public employees. Those people in Oshkosh really do not make much money at all. Where they make up for it is when they retire, they get their health care paid. They cannot retire until age 57. The top paid teacher though makes about $65k, if I recall correctly. Most professional people make far more money than that towards the end of their career… if we are comparing professionals to other professionals.
@Moon-howler
I was making a flippant comment that in South Dakota you now have to go through a 3 day waiting period to get an abortion.. sorta like in VA with it’s 1 handgun a month law. I guess if you can’t stop a right the next best method is regulate it.
Jut, do you happen to have any numbers of PWC to Madison or FFX to Madison? I think a closer comp would be nice but if they’re 3% higher than Richmond (with housing/food/insurance/etc) all factored in then yes those teachers aren’t doing all that well to begin with.
I don’t know what you do about those waiting periods and other ridiculous restrictions that are really meant to stop abortion.
Sadly I guess if you feel strongly about issues like choice, then you just make sure you never vote for anyone who isn’t pro choice. Too bad that with as many important issues in the world, your vote comes down whether a person is pro choice or not. Last time I veered away from that criteria, it became a very critical issue here in Virginia.
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/heck-of-a-job-brown
Fairfax has a higher cost of living than PWC. Loudoun does as well….. It’s hard to make the comparisons from the DC metro area around the US. I can tell you it definitely hampers recruiting efforts for local government espcially in public saftety and IT. Just math but I would say that Milwaukee being 2.7% more costly than Richmond would put PWC more in the >10% range…. I used Milwaukee because it’s close to Oshkosh. Oshkosh is a Chicago suburb really – so salary comparisons are tough. My observations, limited as they are, are that the school administrators more than the average teacher benefited most from unions…. Ain’t that ususally the case………….
I can tell you that I come from a long line of parochial school never public school mind set. My sister who lives in a Milwaukee suburb and could afford any private school chose public HS for her three sweeties – grammer school has all those sacrements! So from my perspective paying $10k a year for high school would be a raise for us!! Not trying to fire anyone up, but if you knew my sister……I feel sorry for the teachers. She’s got some expectations….and so far so good.
Around these parts, administration and such types are not included in salary negoiations. @Juturna. However, I noticed that their benefits were better than teachers.
Here is something to consider: what on earth would those poor educators have up there if they didn’t have the union working for them and collective bargaining?
@punchak – well, consider who I was comparing to – pickins are slim. Perino is not as inclined toward hyperbole.
Well, since women are paid $.70 on the dollar compared to men and teachers are predominantely female – maybe there’s a civil right issue here. We could come up with any number of conspiracy theories… Unions usually benefit top tiers more than line workers. I wonder what the male/female percent of Wisconsin School Administrators is??? Just having fun.
Civil rights violations can be far more lucrative than a union…..
And example of American knowledge from a Newsweek test of 1000 people. I scored 100% at http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html?om_rid=CTiCsY&om_mid=_BNhmKiB8ZvuD37
Scores below are the results from the test.
When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
Correct: 67%
Incorrect: 33%
What happened at the Constitutional Convention? (Really…people got this wrong.)
Correct: 35%
Incorrect: 65%
The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution.
Name one of the writers.
Correct: 12%
Incorrect: 88%
Who was president during World War I? (There were few Beck fans at the test.)
Correct: 20%
Incorrect: 80%
Who did the United States fight in World War II?
Correct: 60%
Incorrect: 40% (40% got THIS WRONG?!!! WTF?)
During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?
Correct: 27%
Incorrect: 73% (I expected this. They didn’t believe it then either.)
What did Susan B. Anthony do?
Correct: 41%
Incorrect: 59%
What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?
Correct: 77%
Incorrect: 23%
Who is in charge of the executive branch?
Correct: 73%
Incorrect: 27% (Apparently NO ONE at the moment.)
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
Correct: 39%
Incorrect: 61%
The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
Correct: 14%
Incorrect: 86%
If both the president and the vice president can no longer serve, who becomes president?
Correct: 58%
Incorrect: 42%
Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
Correct: 19%
Incorrect: 81% (And this is why so many people want the Feds to do stuff.)
How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
Correct: 37%
Incorrect: 63%
What do we call the first 10 amendments to the Constitution?
Correct: 57%
Incorrect: 43% (This is why so many people think that all sorts of things are “rights.”)
What is the supreme law of the land?
Correct: 30%
Incorrect: 70% (There are so many wrong that this has to be purposely taught this way. Also explains Congress.)
How many amendments does the Constitution have?
Correct: 6%
Incorrect: 94% (Yeah, I didn’t actually expect most people to get this one.)
What is the name of the vice president of the United States now?
Correct: 71%
Incorrect: 29%
What is the name of the speaker of the House of Representatives now?
Correct: 41%
Incorrect: 59%
What is the economic system in the United States?
Correct: 33%
Incorrect: 67% (With the crap going on now, no wonder so many got it wrong. Explains Congress.)
I got 110% You must have missed the extra credit.
I didn’t want to ruin the curve for the other students.
Netflix is down. Anyone know what is wrong?
It created a crisis in my house. The 5 year old has nothing to watch on ipad and I am watching the bocs meeting.
Didn’t realize you were so altruistic.
Anything exciting with BOS?
Another reason for supporting PBS (From Cargo’s Newsweek article):
Other factors exacerbate the situation. A big one, Hacker argues, is the decentralized U.S. education system, which is run mostly by individual states: “When you have more centrally managed curricula, you have more common knowledge and a stronger civic culture.” Another hitch is our reliance on market-driven programming rather than public broadcasting, which, according to the EJC study, “devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas.”
@Juturna, Milt Johns is giving the school board report.
I am just trying to find out if I am affected by plan 7 with the redistricting.
Caps/Flyers on the ice….
That’s strange. I didn’t get any of this knowledge from public broadcasting. I got it from my decentralized Catholic and public schooling. The difference now is that those schools are micromanaged by politicians that need to show that they “care.” The teachers are forced to treat knowledge in sound bites and are forced by a central authority to teach to a test. Private schools have more leeway. Competition between schools and school systems is a good thing. At least this way, if one school sucks, they don’t ALL suck because they have to follow the exact same curriculum.
A centrally managed curricula is what drives the SOL’s. And having seen the paper thin studies in social studies that pass for such in elementary school, I don’t see any civic development. I’ve taught my daughter more history than she’s gotten. Its one of the reasons that I would love to homeschool her. I’m going to investigate the nearby Catholic school.
@juturna, it is going on here. Every TV cranking out something different.
Just thought that I would share what I’ve been listening to. Go to You Tube and search:
Rodrigo Y Gabriela
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTj4XDKXK_g
Give the kid a pad of paper and some crayons so he/she can create his/her own ipad. No?
@punchak, we already did the pads of paper. This was the reward. SEriously, I was wondering why netflix was down. I have never encountered that before.
“I gave my limbs for this country and I wouldn’t take them back for a second.”
http://soldiersangelsgermany.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-gave-my-limbs-for-this-country-and-i.html
Go read. Thank God for men like these.
Soldiers’ Angels does good work. If you have some spare change……..
Support Azalea Charities is similar and local to this area. Elizabeth Taylor has died. 🙁
From Supervisor Nohe’s office:
Please join us on Saturday, April 2, as we welcome Marine Corporal Josh Himan home to Prince William County. Josh will be escorted home by the Prince William County Police Department. Those who would like to wish him well are invited to participate as spectators along a portion of the procession route. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate including clubs, organizations, community groups, civic associations and individuals.
Spectators will be assigned specific locations along the procession route to ensure coverage of as much of the route as possible. Information packages will be distributed to those who would like to participate and will contain the spectator’s designated route location, available parking and safety guidelines. Spectators are encouraged to bring signs and banners welcoming and thanking Josh, and American flags will also be distributed to wave as the procession passes.
Due to tremendous enthusiasm in the community and desire of numerous groups and individuals to be involved in welcoming Josh, coordination of participants is critical to ensuring public safety and the success of the day’s events. It is critical that anyone who would like to participate contact us to find out how to they can be involved.
If you are interested in participating, please contact Delain Moyers at (703)792-4620 or [email protected] for event information and participant packages.